Like a great professional Aerial skier Julia Marino has completed the final preparations for the Winter Olympics, US officials have sent a warning to Marino and her teammates about China’s surveillance apparatus. . Athletes have been warned not to bring their personal phones to participate in games. “We’re using the recording phone while we’re going there,” said Marino, a seven-time X Games medalist. an interview on Instagram. Athletes are also warned not to speak out against human rights abuses. “There was discussion about what might happen if we spoke out,” Marino said in the interview.
As Beijing Winter Olympics To begin with, Marino is not alone. Thousands of foreign athletes and coaches, (some) diplomats and members of the media are flocking to the Chinese capital and taking extra measures to protect themselves from snooping by authoritarian law enforcement officials. That means laptops and phones have burners to ensure sensitive data can’t be stored and self-censor potential criticism of human rights abuses against Muslim Uighur population in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. Fergus Hanson, director of international cyber policy at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said: “For anyone visiting China, you have to anticipate that everything you do on an electronic device has already passed. performed on an electronic device. “The level of security you have there is very low.”
A lot has changed since China last hosted the Olympics in the summer of 2008. The country has developed into a technological superpower, with cutting-edge capabilities in everything from artificial intelligence arrive Quantum Computation. Homegrown tech giants create products that have hundreds of millions of users and underpin the essential tasks of people’s daily lives. At the same time, technology surveillance and censorship the country’s citizens abound, China maintains a sophisticated state-backed hacker groupand the United Nations warned about detention and treatment of the Uyghurs.
Up to 1 million Uighurs are being held in detention camps in the Xinjiang region. Many country, including America, has declared that the Chinese government is committing genocide. Evidence that Uyghur populations are being used as forced labor and sterilization. International diplomats are boycotting the game because of the human rights crisis, but critics say Action is not enough to force China to change its approach. Meanwhile, China’s state-backed hackers are more ruthless than ever over the past few years, while other affiliated groups have carried out extensive disinformation activities against critic of the country’s human rights record.
The nations participating in the Olympics are taking the risks seriously. Olympic organizations in Canada, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and the US have warned athletes that any equipment they bring to China is likely to be subject to scrutiny. “It should be assumed that every text, email, online visit, and app access can be monitored or compromised,” US Olympic and Paralympic Committee advisories obtained by AxioS. FBI Summary notes say Travelers should use temporary phones and be trained to spot potential social engineering efforts.
The FBI further recommends that anyone traveling to China regularly update their VPNs, network equipment, and devices, and that they check the logs for new users of the service and the administrative accounts in the system. The security precautions do not exceed what diplomats and members of NGOs visiting China might expect, but they have attracted increasing attention as the North Kinh organizes games and streams of foreigners associated with them. “It is completely normal in China for reporters to have to work,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, who used to live and work in Hong. in a toxic operating environment, unusual for the Olympics. Kong.
